Broadband News

First All-in-one 54Mbps router almost here...

Netgear has announced the release of its new family of
router products - the DG834 and DG834G. The G model is an 802.11g standard device with ADSL modem, router and firewall built in, the plain DG834 is exactly the same but minus the wireless
components and therefore cheaper. The pricing should be around the same as for the corresponding Netgear DG814 and DG824M models.

The DG834G is not quite available in the UK, the first units will be shipped to Europe but unfortunately the UK market will not see its allocation until around mid-November. The DG834 should
start appearing with the online retailers any time now, as they have started to arrive off the planes from the factory.

The previous DG models had a chequered life, with lots of firmware upgrades, for some people they performed rock solid and for others there were lots of problems, which newer firmware generally
fixed. The DG834 and DG834G are based around a different ADSL chip-set. Netgear are now using a Texas Instruments (TI) set, which will hopefully address these issues. One big advantage of the TI
chip is that it has support for ADSL2 and ADSL2+, which means the routers will be future proofed should ADSL2 or ADSL2+ see the light of day on the UK market.

ADSL2 and ADSL2+ offers extensions in reach of around 600 feet for the same speed as the current ADSL standard, and offer the potential for much higher speeds for those closer to the exchanges.